GOP giving Trump a pass on coronavirus-infected aircraft carrier after spending years on Benghazi: Claire McCaskill

Former senator Claire McCaskill called out Republican lawmakers for caring more about four deaths at Benghazi than thousands of deaths already from the coronavirus.

The MSNBC contributor told "Morning Joe" that President Donald Trump's inaction in the early stages of the outbreak had cost potentially hundreds of thousands of lives, and was currently endangering hundreds of sailors' lives on the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

"Delay is deadly," she said, "and this president was in charge and was part of a government that delayed a response, particularly as it related to testing, and as a result, we are going to see thousands and thousands of more people die."

"Look at preventable death, and you look at the crisis this has caused," McCaskill continued. "Think of all the energy that was expended on Benghazi, and all the accusations that were made that, well, it was preventable and there should have been people in the State Department should have known there was a security breach. We have got a ship full of our active military calling and saying, 'Please help us, we have over 200 people infected on this ship with active military in uniform serving our country in theater over across the ocean and this commander in chief knows it, and if we do not take steps to immediately help those people on that ship, what does that say about his ability to lead this country?"

"It is frightening to me that we have this kind of crisis and that there appears to -- nobody is rising to the occasion saying, okay, here's what we're going to do with the Teddy Roosevelt, we're going to take it to Guam," she added. "We've got doctors ready, we're going to take care of our sailors. It is unbelievable."

McCaskill said the president loves to show power, but seems afraid to actually use it.

"Let me just say [this] about Florida and these governors," she said. "You know, this president loves power. You know what he can do today? These governors are afraid of him and they're afraid to lead. All he has to do in his weekly, his daily show, is to say, I'm pleading with all the governors to enter statewide orders to stop schools, to shut down nonessential businesses. That's all the president has to do."